The 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Thursday, October 4, 7:30 pm.

The 17th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will announce and introduce the ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners are traveling to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, all before a standing-room only audience of 1200 people. Full details and action pictures will appear in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. The ceremony also includes other wonders.

AUDIENCE DELEGATIONS: Audience members who come to the ceremony with a group of six or more people can choose (by registering in advance) to be recognized as an official Delegation. Every delegation will be officially celebrated at the beginning of the Ceremony, and the very most colorful delegations will be chosen to parade ostentatiously into the theater.

TO REGISTER AS A DELEGATION: FIRST, purchase your tickets. THEN, register with Louise Sacco, the Grand Panjandrum of the Delegations, at 781-444-6757, or by email.

The registration deadline is Monday, September 24, 2007.

WEBCAST: The ceremony will be webcast live, beginning at 7:15 pm U.S. Eastern time, right here.

Theme: Every year, the ceremony has a new theme. (The theme pertains to some of the goings-on at the ceremony, though not necessarily to any of the year's prize-winning achievements). This year's theme: CHICKEN.

Additional highlights : In addition to the awarding of the Prizes, the ceremony will include a variety of momentously inconsequential events. Among them:

Keynote speech ("Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken") by Doug Zongker, followed by chicken-related Nano-Lectures by three of the world's great thinkers.

The 24/7 LECTURES, in which several of the world's top thinkers each explained his or her subject twice:FIRST: a complete technical description in TWENTY-FOUR (24) SECONDS*AND THEN: a clear summary that anyone can understand, in SEVEN (7) WORDS. The Lecturers include:

The Ig Informal Lectures Saturday, Oct 6, 2007, 1:00 pm.

MIT Building 10, Room 250 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

FREE ADMISSION -- but seating is limited

A half-afternoon of improbably funny, informative, brief (5 minutes each, plus a few questions & answers with the audience), high-spirited public lectures, in which the new Ig Nobel Prize winners will attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it.

About the Ceremony:Annals of Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams (+1) 617-491-4437 Improbable admin Lisa Birk [On October 5, the day of the ceremony, if you can't reach anyone at Improbable Research, please instead call the Harvard News Office, (+1) 617-495-1585]

In this photo taken at the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, Professor Glauber serenely sweeps while Nobel Laureates (left to right) Dudley Herschbach, William Lipscomb, and Richard Roberts wear gigantic shoes in tribute to the 1998 Ig Nobel Statistics Prize winners. Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow can be seen in the distance at left as he rushes to join his colleagues. [Photo by Eric Workman] (Click on image to enlarge it)